PRAYERGEAR.COM / SPIRITUAL RESOURCE SERVICES NEWSLETTER
January 14, 2000 Issue 27: C2C Compliant?

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<>< CONTENTS <><

1. Mini-Reflection
2. Prayergear.com product and services updates
3. Cruising Christian Cyberspace!
4. Let us know!
5. Weekly Reflection: "C2C Compliant?", Part 3 of 4

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Greetings to all of you and a great welcome to our new subscribers! Our family of subscribers are citizens from many countries and from every continent, except Antarctica (for some reason :-). Of far greater importance is that you are citizens of the kingdom of God! That makes it such a joy to write to you. I am humbled and privileged. Thank you and thank our Lord!
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1. ~~ ** Mini-Reflection ** ~~

I obtained a digitally reproduced book written in 1713 from one of our distributors: "The Lord's Prayer in Above a Hundred Languages, Versions and Characters." I love the book because I love that prayer. Of course, people gave it the name of the "Lord's Prayer" but it really is our prayer, Christ's gift to us. In just a few short sentences, Christ summarizes all issues of Christian living: 1) Our redemptive gift ("Our Father"); 2) Our piety ("Holy be Your Name"); 3) Our greatest desire ("Your kingdom come"); 4) Our greatest need ("Your will be done"); 5) Our daily provisions ("Give us this day our daily bread"); 6) Our spiritual freedom ("Forgive our sins"); 7) Our reconciliation ("as we forgive those who sin against us"); 8) Our covenant of obedience and following the narrow road ("Lead us away from temptation"); 9) Our spiritual warfare ("Deliver us from evil"); 10) Our greatest love and devotion ("For Yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever!")

This prayer was given upon request. The only request by the disciples of Jesus recorded in scripture was to be taught to pray. It isn't recorded that they ever asked Him how to raise the dead, heal the sick, cast out demons, walk on water, etc. This is significant! Scripture is telling us something here! It is elevating the importance, need and power of prayer above all other acts. I can't raise the dead or walk on water and I don't think any of you can. But we can pray!

However, some surveys I read report that ministers, on the average, pray only 12 minutes a day. Laymen tabulations came in at 2 minutes a day on average. Do you share my astonishment? But many would say, "I figured that." If spouses talked to each other only a few minutes a day, or not at all, waiting for a designated time like a Wednesday evening hour or a Sunday morning hour, the covenant of marriage would certainly weaken, remain unfulfilling or dissolve. We, the Body of Christ, are His bride. We have the most glorious and incomprehensibly grand covenant with the very Creator of all! Please, let's talk with Him as the scriptures instruct, "unceasingly"! When the morning sun begins to dissolve the darkness of night, I get excited like a child on Christmas morning. It's time to pray in a new day, time to hang out with my heavenly Father for a while before attending to anything else. It's been said that no one facing physical death will utter, "I wish I spent more time at the office." David writes in the Psalms (57:9), "I will wake up the sun and sing to You!" Let's all do that tomorrow. We are in different time zones around the world so God's children will be waking up the sun and singing to Him all day long!
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2. ~~ ** Product and Services Updates ** ~~

We have just contracted with a manufacturer of Bible teaching games for all ages with over 400 products available. We will be posting some of the best on our virtual store's web site this week. Please check them out.

Also check out our new line of powerful witness T-shirts, sweatshirts and caps towards the end of the week, replacing many of our current promotions.

We remind "old" and new subscribers to avail yourselves of the excellent Bible search engine (Gateway), our syndicated news service that's updated hourly, the multitude of links to other Christian resources on the web, our classified ads (free service), the AllAdvantage.com get-paid-to-surf-the-net service, our articles on spiritual warfare and the practice of Christian faith and prayer, and much more, all on our web site.

By the end of this month we anticipate marking the 100,000th visitor to the Prayergear.com web site (not "hits", as there is a difference.) Thank you! Please keep passing along the word about our services along with the Word Whom we worship.
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3. ~~ ** Cruising Christian Cyberspace! ** ~~

Our feature this week is the Involved Christian Radio Network (www.icrn.com).
In addition to other ministers of the Gospel, our affiliate and brothers and sisters in Christ, Fresh Wind Ministry, is accessible in audio format through this site. We'll let Fresh Wind have the final say: "Fresh Wind Ministry embarks upon an additional way to share the message of Jesus to hundreds of thousands through Involved Christian Radio Network (ICRN.COM) You can listen to our Fresh Wind teaching (Audio File) any time you want. Just go to www.icrn.com and find our ministry under FRESH WIND and click on play. If you don't have a way to play the file you will see a link
on that page to download the RealPlayer."
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4. ~~ ** Let us know! ** ~~

From last week: "A reminder that we welcome interaction among the members of the Body of Christ and are sincerely interested in how you think we are doing and how we can better meet your needs as a spiritual resource.

We mentioned before our desire to include another category to this newsletter, "Subscriber Sharings". While we truly appreciate the kind and encouraging feedback on our web site service and these newsletters, we are inviting your own "mini-reflections," so to speak. Perhaps a catalyst is needed. Remember the questions I posed above: Why the great secret as to the timing of Christ's return and what would happen if we knew when? What do you think? We'll publish your ideas without identifying you (unless you want that) in the next newsletter so the rest of us can ponder."

And here is another question for you...Referring back to our Mini-Reflection, what is it about the practice of prayer that results in such a poor performance among many Christians? What can you help us learn about prayer? Please, let us know!
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5. This week's Weekly Reflection follows. Please encourage others to subscribe! Share this newsletter with many of your friends and help spread the word. That's our only means of growing and reaching more people...your recommendations to others.

So in gratitude to God for all things, let me bid you grace in the Name of our Lord and please keep in touch with us! We are blessed to hear from you!

John
 

John S. Hilkevich, Ph.D.
Spiritual Resource Services: Prayergear.com!
~ Education, Services and Products
in the Christian Faith ~
www.prayergear.com
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For a more attractively formatted Weekly Reflection or links to previous
Reflections, point your browser to
http://www.prayergear.com/weeklyintro.html

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WEEKLY REFLECTIONS

C2C Compliant?

Part 3 of 4
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